Milnes: Pearson's real legacy transcends the peacekeeping myths

Arthur Milnes and his wife, Alison, embarked upon a special project to mark Canada’s sesquicentennial year: A time capsule. But rather than filling it with things from around their home in Kingston, the pair have reached out far and wide to people, places and institutions with any connection to this country. The responses, whether from small towns or celebrities, have shed light on Canada’s true identity and place in the world. This is the latest in an ongoing series of columns on his Canada 150 time capsule by Arthur Milnes.

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My dad was a great fan of John Diefenbaker. While he didn’t always vote for Dief between 1956 and 1967 — the years the Prairie firebrand was Tory leader — he was thankful Dief opened his parochial Ontario eyes up to a Canada that existed from coast to coast to northern coast.

I recall, in particular, a telephone discussion I had with Dad during the summer of 1995 on my first working experience north of 60. Dad was thrilled that I had driven that day, outside of Yellowknife, on one of Dief’s actual “Roads to Resources.”

And as Canada under Brian Mulroney in the 1980s became deeply involved in the battle against South African apartheid, Dad again told me how he remembered Dief fondly, this time in the apartheid context.

Dad told me when I was 17 how Diefenbaker bravely led the charge to have South Africa suspended from Commonwealth membership due to apartheid.

At the same time, he admired Lester B. Pearson, and I suspect that he voted more often for Pearson than Dief.

But he reminded me once when I was going through what I suspect is — even still — a common rite of passage for most politically engaged teenagers up here; I was filled with self-righteous anti-Americanism.

Dad advised me to be careful.

I made the “mistake” of using Canada’s record in peacekeeping through the UN to make my anti-American point, and I invoked Pearson at Suez.

Dad took me to one of his books on Suez and asked me to look up Pearson and Canada in the index.

I did.

Neither was there.

Dad then told me that one of the reasons Pearson and Canada were listened to at the time of Suez was in part due to the fact that Canada, under prime minister Louis St. Laurent and Pearson, secretary of state for External Relations, were Cold Warriors. We had something like 12 squadrons of RCAF planes on the front lines in Europe, helped found NATO and operated aircraft carriers on the seas.

And only recently — and, full disclosure, I did serve proudly as the researcher on Brian Mulroney’s memoirs — I realized that Mulroney and Canada operated much the same as Pearson and St. Laurent while the former were engaging in peacekeeping missions worldwide, but at the same time sending CF-18s and ships to fight Saddam Hussein’s aggression.

And by the end of the Mulroney years, after the tragedy of Somalia and the never-ending bloodbath of the former Yugoslavia, where Canada indeed punched above its weight, polling and today’s scholarship demonstrates that Canadians of all party views were realizing there was a difference between peacekeeping and peace-making.

And we didn’t like the latter.

So contrary to established wisdom — and full disclosure again as I did proudly work as a speechwriter for the 22nd prime minister — in my respectful view, Stephen J. Harper was acting positively Pearsonian by being skeptical of the UN and the blue berets during his time in the PMO. And like Pearson of the 1950s, Harper sent planes, guns and troops into the world’s hot spots.

Contrary to our national myth, the world is not sitting around dreaming of Canadian blue berets. Countries will take them when the need arises but they’d also take troops from Albania.

Or Colombia.

Or Botswana.

Don’t, however, think for a minute I am discounting the very real and unique skills at peacekeeping Canada has developed, including such innovations as involving the RCMP, as we did for the first time under Mulroney during a mission in 1980-90 to Namibia for a minute. And that’s just naming one advance Canada has made.

But to be frank, our national myth about Pearson and peacekeeping, the one that often ignores Pearson’s very real historical bona fides as a Cold Warrior, is not a bad one to have.

As a Canadian, I kinda like it.

I can think of worse ones.

With that said, and involving my time capsule, a message I received from the president of today’s Namibia reminds me of a time when the peacekeeping Canadian “myth” was not a myth.

That mission, helping transition that country to post-racial independence after the horrors of apartheid, was indeed a golden time for Canada.

A true time for the blue beret and the Canadian flag shoulder patches.

And that’s why that African presidential message, and a flag and letter from Canada’s current ambassador to the UN sent me, are proudly placed in my time capsule for Canada

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